As men our fathers, whether fully engaged in our lives, or absent had profound impact on our lives. Father is a role, it needn’t be a blood relative, it is the presence of masculine energy, the modeling of how men behave. Who was your father? What did he teach you? It is through looking up to the grown men in our lives that we learned, through modeling what a man is. We may have rebelled against what we saw, we may have idolized it, we may have done both. Perhaps your father wasn’t there, or there were additional men who deeply impacted your life. What was it that you learned? What came away as truth? If you resisted, resented or rejected, what did you struggle against? How did he react to you?

How has your relationship to your father evolved, if at all? What has remained the same? Do you know about his own relationship to his father? What was that like? Are there bigger patterns that are repeating? How did your father show you love? How did he demonstrate power? How was his relationship to your mother? Did this impact how you related to women?

If you have children, or ever think about the possibility, how does your relationship to your kids reflect lessons from your own father? What have you rejected? What have you kept as valuable, as important? Are there things you wanted to avoid that somehow you found yourself doing anyway?

What does it mean to be a father? What are the relationships that that a father must learn to manage?

Last time we touched on different kinds of relationships we may be involved in. Specifically we relayed stories about those who we work with, families, or romantic partners. It is possible to gain insight into ourselves and our relationships by looking at them though the lens of agreements. Whenever we enter into relationship we are making an agreement either explicitly or tacitly about what we will give, what we expect to get, and what kinds of boundaries we need. Agreements are the fundamental building block of relationship, and while we are explicit about them in business we rarely look at the agreements we unconsciously enter into in our private, personal lives. The agreements we may make with a lover might be around commitment, monogamy, honesty, support, reliability, priority, or availability. We might make agreements with a colleague around trust, competence, responsibility, or direction (goals). We may make agreements with a client around timing, cost, deliverables, or quality.

Reflecting on your own life what agreements have you made? With whom have you made them? How tacit or explicit are they?

Do you feel more comfortable when the agreements have been spelled out, or do you prefer to let them be quietly understood?

What might you gain from strengthening your agreements by talking about them? By raising consciousness around expectations, needs and desires? What kinds of agreements do you need from people? What do these agreements protect or guarantee? Do you honor your agreements? How can you make better agreements, ones which are clear, which you honor, and which help you become a more evolved being?

I look forward to meeting with you

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who we are

This web site shows the content of a men's group in the Berkeley, Oakland, Alameda area across the Bay from San Francisco. It also provides information for men interested in creating their own men's group. While this site is no longer actively used by a particular men's group, it is being left publicly available as a means of facilitating the meeting of men.